Andrew Savikas
Andrew Savikas is the CEO of Safari Books Online. Previously he was VP of Digital Initiatives at O'Reilly Media and the program chair for O'Reilly's Tools of Change for Publishing conference.
Andrew holds a B.S. in Media Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and an MBA from Northeastern University in Boston. He is a frequent speaker at publishing and content management conferences, and is also the author of "Word Hacks: Tips & Tools for Taming your Text".
2009 O'Reilly Ebook Revenue up 104%
During the past 18 months we've seen a dramatic shift in customer preference from print to digital when looking at sales from oreilly.com, which is a substantial sales channel for us. And looking across all of our sales channels for individual ebooks — including mobile apps — 2009 ebook revenue was up a staggering 104% on 2008 (which was more…
Ten Reasons Why You Should Sign up for TOC 2010 Right Now
From keynote speaker Arianna Huffington to featured events like A Conversation with Tim O’Reilly & Ray Kurzweil, there are plenty of reasons to attend the O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference, happening February 22-24, 2010 in New York City. Here are ten reasons why you should sign up right now.
Why the Apple/Publisher News isn't Really News
The interwebs are abuzz over reports that Apple has been in talks with the "big 6" publishers to make their content available on the mythical (and purportedly forthcoming) Apple Tablet. Mike Shatzkin has a nice analysis piece on why publisher-set pricing is a potential game-changer for ebooks, and while it is indeed refreshing to see retailers and publisher drop…
PDF vs. EPUB vs. Mobi Format Download Comparison for oreilly.com
UPDATE: Additional view showing relative volume, rather than percentage. I'm honored to have been elected to the IDPF Board of Directors, and will use the occasion to share some interesting data about download formats from oreilly.com. For most of our titles, we offer three different (DRM-free) formats: PDF, EPUB, and Kindle-compatible Mobipocket. PDF continues to be the most popular format,…
David Pogue Revisits DRM Question about Ebooks
In a blog post today, New York Times Columnist (and bestselling O’Reilly author) David Pogue responds to a reader question about DRM (he calls it “copy protection”) in light of all the recent ereader buzz, and he’s very honest and open about his (very natural) reaction to finding copies of his books out in the wild: “As an author myself, I, too, am terrified by the thought of piracy. I can’t stand seeing my books, which are the primary source of my income, posted on all these piracy Web sites, available for anyone to download free.” He then discusses sales for one of his books since we began offering it as a (DRM-free) ebook: “The thing was pirated to the skies. It’s all over the Web now, ridiculously easy to download without paying… The crazy thing was, sales of the book did not fall.”
First Look at nook: Not Encouraging
We (finally) received our nooks (pre-ordered quite some time ago), and the early results are … disappointing. Loading one (any) of our EPUB ebooks causes the nook to hang, and the book never opens. I tried loading a number of O’Reilly Media titles that are valid and work on the Sony Reader and every other ePub device. The Nook only brought up the “Formatting” message, and then hung. Only a full restart would bring it back. This is an extremely serious problem.
Rolling out Android .apk Files in Ebook Bundles
A distinguishing feature of Google's Android Market compared to the App Store is that it's a non-exclusive agreement. That means Android app developers are free to sell their apps in other places. With the nearly 200 Microsoft Press ebooks now available through oreilly.com, we've begun adding the Android ".apk" application file to our ebook bundle (we'll be rolling it…
Outperforming Books at Getting a Job Done
Clay Christensen talks about how people hire products to do jobs for them, and for a very long time books have been the best performers at doing certain types of jobs. That's changing of course, and the crop of new Augmented Reality applications should be on the radar of many types of publisher, from travel to fiction to repair manuals:…
Michael Cairns on segmenting publishing strategy
Nice (longish) piece from Michael Cairns on mapping out strategy, specifically related to servicing authors seeking self-publishing services: Professional either have a track record of selling titles and/or have commercial interests such as a seminar business where the book is a component but not the main source of revenue. In the latter case, the author/publisher maybe less concerned with the…
Michael Cairns on segmenting publishing strategy
Nice (longish) piece from Michael Cairns on mapping out strategy, specifically related to servicing authors seeking self-publishing services: Professional either have a track record of selling titles and/or have commercial interests such as a seminar business where the book is a component but not the main source of revenue. In the latter case, the author/publisher maybe less concerned with the…